Our Leesburg-area club marked the day after Thanksgiving, "Buy Nothing Day." This is part of the simplicity movement and is featured on the video Affluenza, which many are familiar with. We enjoyed Christmas cookies and pumpkin pie and made paper Moravian stars Christmas ornaments.

Our club leader is participating in an ongoing effort to observe amphibians with the Loudoun (VA) Amphibian Monitoring Project. This involves looking under rocks and logs for salamanders, listening for frog calls and looking for frogs and their eggs. We are still learning to identify all the species. Club members often go along on these outings in the woods and stream behind our church, looking for amphibians, enjoying the outdoors, or picking up trash we find in the stream. They are learning that amphibians are environmental indicators. Slowly, more kids are becoming curious and wanting to find frog eggs, etc. We also have learned about looking for benthic macroinvertebrates to indicate water quality.

I have been disappointed to find out that deforestation has taken place in the area in which I live in Portugal. On, Friday, April 20, I will be going to my brother's school to talk on conservation and the effects of people on nature. Coming with me will be probably two or three animals, one of which I know is a Painted turtle, which will give the children an opportunity to get up close and personal with animals. I feel it is vital to educate the public on conservation, especially children. For if you teach those children conservation, that seed of eagerness to help nature will be passed on from generation to generation, thus ensuring future generations of conservationists to come.

Thirty members created and distributed flyers and posters announcing that we were collecting pet food for the Animal Adoption Center. The collection was part of the Spirit Week Class Competition and everyone who brought in donations for the Adoption Center was given credit for their grade level. After the three day event, the amount of donations brought in by each class was tallied. The club collected over 500 items of cat and dog food valued at over $700. We chose to give all of the donations to the Animal Adoption Center, a private no-kill facility, because they were in need of supplies for animals being brought in that were victims of Hurricane Katrina.

We initially came up with the idea from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), which certifies schoolyard habitats that meet several requirements. We chose a location for the habitat that was far enough away from the main school building to minimize human disturbances while allowing easy access. The area we chose to transform into a habitat is alongside a community bike trail, allowing easy access to students, joggers, and the elderly who often take walks on this trail from nearby nursing homes. First we took several hours removing debris from the area that would pose as a danger to wildlife, constructed a brush pile to provide a shelter for small animals, and mounted a bird feeder and four NWF Chickadee Nesting Boxes. These boxes are specially adapted for use in the schoolyard, allowing students to observe the nest for bird development from egg to fledgling. We funded this project through several bake sales that raised $200 earlier in the year for this project. After we completed this first phase of the project, we contacted a naturalist working for the township, who had completed a similar habitat restoration project at a nearby public lake. He analyzed the area for us, giving us valuable information concerning which plants were native to our region and which species were invasive. From this information we were able to remove several invasive species including Japanese Honeysuckle and Tree of Heaven while leaving valuable native plants like Sassafras unharmed. During the winter, we created edible wildlife decorations. These decorations, including pinecones covered in peanut butter, suet, and seed as well as strings of peanuts, popcorn and fruit, provided wildlife with a food supply when natural food sources are scarce while decorating the habitat during the dreary winter. We made new decorations at our meetings each week and then hung them up around the habitat.

Our group visited the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, which consists of a wildlife rehabilitation hospital and an education center on a large property surrounding a lake in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Over time, trash and weeds accumulated on one of the trails at the refuge. While this trail was used by people of all ages visiting the refuge, it was especially popular among the elderly who found the trail increasingly difficult to navigate and dangerous. We volunteered to come out to the refuge, bring our own tools, and clean up the trail. We stayed at Cedar Run for four hours, clearing the trail while also exploring and learning about the Pinelands from one of Cedar Run's naturalists. We had to bring all of our own tools including rakes, clippers, shovels, and work gloves. We raked the pine needles and other debris off the trail to define its barriers. We then stacked some of the logs to block off dangerous sections of the trail, used our clippers to trim back plants, and pulled out weeds. Each participant also donated $5 to the refuge.

Since the Voorhees Pediatric Facility is located across the street from the high school, our club had a great opportunity to volunteer at the facility on a regular basis. The Pediatric Facility provides long term medical care to severely ill and disabled children of all ages. All but a couple of these children are confined to wheelchairs, and few of the children can speak or move well. Our club decided that we would help these children make their own wildlife decorations. We helped the children make many different types of decorations including pinecones smeared with peanut butter and suet and dipped in seed; garlands of grapes, apples, popcorn, and peanuts; and bagels spread with peanut butter and dipped in seed. After we finished making the decorations with the children, we would hang the decorations in courtyards where the children could view them from their playrooms. We visited the children every Wednesday throughout the winter. After several weeks of hanging the decorations, many different types of birds showed up to feed while we were at the facility. The children were extremely excited that the wildlife enjoyed their decorations and were eager to learn from us what types of birds were feeding.

We worked with a student in the media department to create two videos to air on the morning announcements. The first video provided an introduction to Jane Goodall and Roots & Shoots while the second video goes into more depth about the plight of chimpanzees and the Tchimpounga Youth Campaign. We also made posters and hung fliers from the Roots & Shoots website about the bushmeat trade and the Tchimpounga Sanctuary. To raise funding, we planned two breakfast sales and three bake sales. A local bakery donated all the bagels for our campaign and BJ's Wholesale Club gave us a gift certificate to buy muffins and juice. We also collected Chimp Change during lunches. Overall we donated several hundred dollars to the campaign.

Through a nationwide recycling campaign, our Roots & Shoots group will be able to donate money directly to the Jane Goodall Institute. We will earn 5-6 cents for every 20 oz. pop bottle we send to TerraCycle, a group that recycles the pop bottles for eco-friendly plant food. The company ships four postage paid boxes to your organization, and after receiving two boxes (which contain 70 bottles) they will ship two more boxes to you. They cut checks to your chosen organization twice a year, in June and December.